Scooter
The name of AltaVista's spider. (The name refers to the
annual motorcycle races held at the famous AltaVista Raceway)

score
Search engines usually arrange search results from the most
relevant to the least relevant (as determined by the search
engine's algorithm). In order to rank documents, the search
engine assigns a score to each page and those with the highest
scores are listed first. Most search engines simply give
the maximum score to the most relevant document and score
all other relevant documents relative to that document.
Others compare all documents to a theoretically perfect
document. The score of a web page therefore refers to its
relevance as perceived by a specific search engine.

scored keyword phrase
Name given to phrases that searchers use that are tracked
by a system the records the number of times the phrase was
used in a search, also known as the score.

script
A piece of programming designed to perform a certain function
on a web page - for example to create a rollover effect
on buttons or to create pop-ups.

search
The process of locating information - on the Internet typically
done by searching through documents in search engine and
directory databases.

search engine
A tool for finding information on the Internet. Most search
engines consist of the following main components:
1. Spider
2. Indexer
3. Database
4. Search software
5. Web interface
Documents found by the spider are processed by the indexer
and stored in a database. From the database the search software
extracts documents based on parameters entered by the user.
Examples of search engines include Google and AllTheWeb.
Directories like Yahoo and ODP are often referred to as
search engines although they are not. The details of how
search engines work are discussed in more detail in the
Search Engine Yearbook.

search engine marketing
See SEO

search engine optimization
See SEO

search engine positioning
See SEO

search hours
The actual amount of time (in hours) all visitors to a search
engine spent there during a given month. Audience reach
and search hours are the two major factors when calculating
the popularity of a search engine.

searchjacking
A variation of spamdexing where pages are optimized for
popular search terms even though those terms are not related
to the page content. In the long run this technique makes
little sense, as it attracts mostly untargeted visitors.

SearchKing
http://www.searchking.com
A comparatively small search engine. It's claim to fame
is that it allows users to vote on the relevance of documents
it returns for queries - and it then uses that data to continually
increase the accuracy of its search results. In September
2002 SearchKing was (according to them) penalized by Google.
The rumor has it that sites that link to SearchKing were
also penalized and we decided to disable the link above.
You can still visit the SearchKing site by typing http://www.searchking.com
into the address bar of your browser.

search results
The documents returned by a search engine in response to
a query.
Also see SERP.

search term(s)
Words entered into a search engine's search box to form
a query.

search tree
A seldom used synonym for a searchable directory.

SEO
Search Engine Optimization. This term is widely used in
the search engine industry as a collective name for those
activities that are directly or indirectly aimed at improving
a page's search engine ranking. Sometimes the term SEO is
also used to refer to providers of SEO services - in other
words it's used in the place of terms like "SEO provider"
and "SEO specialist". For a detailed discussion
of the SEO industry and SEO techniques, please refer to
the Search Engine Yearbook.

SERP(S)
Search Engine Results Page(s). The term refers to the page
of search results a search engine displays in response to
a query.

shadow domain
Also known as a "ghost domain", referring to a
domain used to funnel traffic (or link popularity) to a
site. Typically it would involve setting up a throwaway
domain and either automatically redirecting visitors to
the "real site" or just linking to it. Both uses
are considered spam by most of the major search engines.

Sidewinder
The name of Infoseek's spider.

similarity
The measure of the degree to which a document matches a
query or the degree to which two or more documents are alike.

siphoning
A collective name for the different techniques used to steal
traffic from another site. For example the use of another's
trade name in the title tag etc.
Also see obfuscation and spamdexing.

site hit
See hit.

sitemap
A map to your site. A sitemap contains links to every page
of your site (check out Google's sitemap). The important
benefit of having a sitemap (apart from helping your visitors
find what they are looking for) is that spiders can find
all pages on a site quickly and with fewer hops. For maximum
benefit, insert a prominent link to your sitemap on every
page of your site.

site search
A search utility that allows the user to search through
documents on a particular site. Different from a search
engine in that it's database contains only documents found
on that site as opposed to a wider collection of documents
from all over the web.

skewing
A technique used by search engines. It refers to the practice
of artificially altering the search results so that certain
documents will score well on certain queries.

slamming
A seldom used synonym for spamdexing.

Slurp
Inktomi's spider. Click here for more spider names.

Sniffer
The name of a program that Infoseek used to "sniff
out" attempts at spamdexing.

snippet
Referring to the quoted pieces of page content search engines
like Google use on the SERPs instead of a traditional, webmaster
created site descriptions. The term originates from the
"NOSNIPPET" robots meta tag used to disallow SNIPPETS.

sorting results
Search engines sort results displayed on the SERP in a particular
order - usually from most relevant to least relevant. Some
search engines allow the user to sort results based on different
criteria, for example alphabetically, arranged from newest
to oldest etc.

spam
A collective name for those marketing techniques that are
intrusive, offensive and/or unethical in some way. A major
characteristic is that it aims its message at a wide (often
in the millions), untargeted audience - which it can afford
because electronic distribution is very cheap. The most
common form of spam is unsolicited commercial e-mail. In
the search engine world, regular mass submission of web
pages to search engines is also referred to as spam or spamdexing.
The term spamdexing is also used to refer to all SEO techniques
that are deceptive or unethical.

spamdexing
All attempts to deceive search engines or gain an unfair
advantage in the search results of a search engine. Spamdexing
decreases the value of a search engine's index by reducing
the precision with which the search engine can return relevant
documents. Most search engines have measures in place to
detect spamdexing and guilty pages are usually either penalized
or de-listed. Many webmasters inadvertently make themselves
guilty by braking search engine submission rules. For a
detailed discussion of what to do and what not to do, please
refer to the Search Engine Yearbook.

spamming
See spam, spamdexing

spider / spyder
A browser-like program that forms part of a search engine.
Its task is to "surf" the web by following links
from one page to the next and from one site to the next.
It collects information from the sites it visits and that
information is stored in the search engine's database. For
detailed discussions on spiders, the other components of
search engines, spider names etc., please refer to the Search
Engine Yearbook.

spidering
What spiders do - the process of surfing the web and indexing
documents.

splash page
A page that is displayed before users enter a site. Splash
pages are often comparatively empty except for a logo, welcome
message and "click here to enter" type of link.
Splash pages are often used to house introductory Flash
animations. Splash pages are generally considered annoying
since they offer very little value. Even very impressive
splash pages offer only entertainment - which normally distracts
from the sales effort and hampers SEO.

spoofing
See IP spoofing, spamdexing

SSI (Server Side Include)
A type of HTML command that allows webmasters to insert
code from an outside HTML document. It is especially used
with things like menus, headers and footers that are the
same for all pages. To change the menu, for example, the
webmaster changes only the external menu file and the menu
changes across the entire site. SSI can also be used to
insert non-HTML elements like scripts.

stats / statistics
In the context of search engines, the term is often used
to refer to the information created by some type of reporting
software. The web server log files for the site are used
as the source of the information. Also known as Web stats,
web reporting, statistics, and traffic reports.
Additional information:
Stats typically include information like number of visitors,
referring URLs, search engine queries used, number of page
views etc.

stealth
A collective name for techniques (like cloaking) that aim
to deliver optimized content to spiders while delivering
the "real" page to human visitors. Almost all
search engines consider stealth a form of spamdexing.

stemming
The use of linguistic analysis to get to the root form of
a word. Search engines that use stemming compare the root
forms of the search terms to the documents in its database.
For example, if the user enters "viewer" as the
query, the search engine reduces the word to its root ("view")
and returns all documents containing the root - like documents
containing view, viewer, viewing, preview, review etc.

stop word
Words like conjunctions, prepositions etc. that are so commonly
used that they have little or no influence on relevance.
Most search engines ignore stop words entered in a query.
Also see inverse document frequency.

sub-category
Directories are typically divided into top-level categories
that contain sub-categories or lower level categories. Directories
often run several category levels deep.

Subject-Specific Popularity
Snippet from the Teoma web site:
"Teoma adds a new dimension and level of authority
to search results through its breakthrough approach, known
as Subject-Specific Popularity(SM)." Source: http://sp.teoma.com/docs/teoma/about/searchwithauthority.html

Teoma's Subject-Specific Popularity takes
link popularity a step further by ranking pages based on
the number of same-subject pages that reference it. What
makes this approach effective is that natural occuring topic
communities on the Net are more qualified to "vote"
for (by linking to) pages within their communities. By using
Subject-Specific Popularity, Teoma is able to return (arguably)
more relevant search results than any other search engine.

submission
The process of manually adding a URL to a search engine's
list of URLs to spider - in effect telling a spider about
a page in order to get it spidered and ultimately added
to the search engine's database.

submission rules
Most search engines have a list of rules that must be obeyed
when submitting sites to be spidered. Examples of submission
rules include how often the page may be resubmitted (if
at all), how many pages may be submitted per day etc. For
links to the submission rules pages of the major search
engines, please refer to the Search Engine Yearbook.

submission service
Services exist where the user can have pages submitted to
multiple search engines for a fee. The fee is normally very
low, but usually not as low as the quality of the submission.
We have a more detailed explanation of submission services
and the dangers, as well as guidelines to choosing a reputable
SEO service in our Search Engine Yearbook.

submission software
Programs that assist webmasters in optimizing and submitting
web pages to search engines. There are countless programs
available, but probably only a handful that are worth getting.
You can find full reviews of the top 2 programs in our Search
Engine Yearbook.